it has equally
sublimated above every unholy thought; a common power seems to have
invested them all with a preternatural majesty. Yet not an iota of the
_individual_ is lost in any one; the gentle bearing and amenity
of John still follow him in his office of almoner; nor in Peter does
the deep repose of the erect attitude of the Apostle, as he deals the
death-stroke to the offender by a simple bend of his finger, subdue
the energetic, sanguine temperament of the Disciple.

If any man may be said to have reigned over the hearts of his fellows,
it was Raffaelle Sanzio. Not that he knew better what was in the
hearts and minds of men than many others, but that he better
understood their relations to the external. In this the greatest names
in Art fall before him; in this he has no rival; and, however derived,
or in whatever degree improved by study, in him it seems to have risen
to intuition. We know not how he touches and enthralls us; as if he
had wrought with the simplicity of Nature, we see no effort; and we
yield as to a living influence, sure, yet inscrutable.

It is not to be supposed that these two celebrated Artists were at all
times successful. Like other men, they had their moments of weakness,
when they fell into manner, and gave us diagrams, instead of life.
Perhaps no one, however, had fewer lapses of this nature than
Raffaelle; and yet they are to be found in some of his best works. We
shall notice now only one instance,--the figure of St. Catherine in
the admirable picture of the Madonna di Sisto; in which we see an
evident rescript from the Antique, with all the received lines of
beauty, as laid down by the analyst,--apparently faultless, yet
without a single inflection which the mind can recognize as allied to
our sympathies; and we turn from it coldly, as from the work of an
artificer, not of an Artist. But not so can we turn from the intense
life, that seems almost to breathe upon us from the celestial group of
the Virgin and her Child, and from the Angels below: in these we have
the evidence of the divine afflatus,--of inspired Art.

In the works of Michael Angelo it were easy to point out numerous
examples of a similar failure, though from a different cause; not from
mechanically following the Antique, but rather from erecting into
a model the exaggerated _shadow_ of his own practice; from
repeating lines and masses that might have impressed us with grandeur
but for the utter absence of the informi